Doctor Aphra #18 revealed the Ascendant cult’s endgame, and it was truly terrifying.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers from Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #18, on sale now from Marvel Comics.
Star Wars‘ prequel trilogy showed that the pre-Order 66 Jedi Order had started to turn away from the Force, becoming arrogant and legalistic. Hubris aside, though, there was never any question that they were the franchise’s heroes. They confronted the Sith and their Dark Side machinations at every turn, protecting the innocent people of the galaxy. However, the Sith might not have been the Jedi’s worst enemy after all. Out of the depths of time, a Dark Side cult is making its resurgence in the Star Wars: Doctor Aphra comics and the cult’s endgame was much worse than anything the Sith ever did.
Recently, the Doctor Aphra series introduced the Ascendant, an ancient cult that used technology to emulate and replicate the effects of the Force. The most recent, Doctor Aphra #18, (by Alyssa Wong, Minkyu Jung, Rachelle Rosenberg, and VC’s Joe Caramagna) dove deeper into the Ascendant’s endgame, and it was truly horrifying.
Doctor Aphra #18 showed Aphra and Sana Starros trying to hunt down some of the Ascendant’s technology, but the wannabe Dark Sider, Kho Phon Farrus, consistently stayed one step ahead of them. From a plot standpoint, not much happened in the issue. However, there was a panel where Farrus recited some kind of Ascendant incantation or motto. It talked about rituals, blood sacrifices, and eternal life, but one particular line stood out. It said, “Two’s false division shall be undone, and without the Force are all made one.”
At first glance, the line seems like a bunch of cultish mumbo-jumbo, but what if the “two” were the Light and Dark Sides of the Force? That would make sense as the ancient Ascendant cultists didn’t care about the Light versus the Dark. They simply wanted to replicate the Force, at least that’s what it seemed like up until now because the rest of that line poses a major problem.
The only reason that the Ascendant cultists would have wanted to combine the “two” would be so that they could have gotten rid of the Jedi and the Sith at the same time. But it seems like they wanted much more than that. The words “without the Force” make it seem like destroying the Jedi and the Sith was only a stepping stone on the path to the Ascendant’s true endgame. In other words, the Ascendant cultists didn’t want to conquer the Jedi and the Sith on the road to power, they wanted to destroy the Force itself.
It would be a brilliant and sinister plot because, if the Ascendant cultists could have destroyed the Force, then everyone would have bowed to their Force-emulating technology. Of course, destroying the Force, the thing that binds the galaxy together sounds like an impossibly bad idea, but it must not have been out of the question. The fact that the Ascendant cult was destroyed (apparently by a Jedi and Sith alliance) must mean that the cult was a real threat to the galaxy. After all, the Jedi and Sith don’t team up for just anything. Either way, if Kho Phon Farrus is close to unlocking the secrets of the Ascendant cult, then the galaxy better watch out.
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